A wide variety of instruments exist for use by health care professionals, including those for surgery, wound care and treatment, exploratory procedures, dentistry, and other applications. Medical instruments are sometimes designed and constructed for a specific purpose, e.g., cutting and dissecting, clamping, grasping and holding, suctioning, retracting, dilating, etc. Maintaining proper sterility of non-disposable instruments can be paramount in hospital and other clinical care settings where medical instruments are sometimes re-used after proper cleaning and sterilization techniques. Disease can be spread between patients if appropriate measures are not taken to thoroughly clean and disinfect instruments such as saws, scissors, bone chisels, endoscopes, and the like before they are reused on another patient.
Medical equipment can be prepared for re-use following a three step process including cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization. Cleaning is a macro-scale process that includes removing visible debris, blood, tissue, bone, and other, similar materials from the instrument. Disinfection commonly includes the application of chemicals or subjecting the instrument to physical processes capable of destroying pathogens. Sterilization commonly refers to processes that destroy all viable forms of microbial life, including bacterial spores by either physical or chemical processes and includes, for example, irradiation and autoclave methods.
Medical instruments can be very expensive to hospitals and clinics, therefore, they are often reused if it the risk of infection or disease transmission from one patient to another can be minimized. Thus, proper cleaning, disinfecting, and sterilization can not only reduce risk to the patient, but provide cost savings to hospitals and clinics.